The Farrels had never challenged competition.  They had been content to make their broad acres pay a sum sufficient to meet operating-expenses and the interest-charges on the ancient mortgage, meanwhile supporting themselves in all the ease and comfort of their class by nibbling at their principal.  Just how far his ancestors had nibbled, the last of the Farrels was not fully informed, but he was young and optimistic, and believed that, with proper management and the application of modern ranching principles, he would succeed, by the time he was fifty, in saving this principality intact for those who might come after him, for it was not a part of his life plan to die childless—­now that the war was over and he out of it practically with a whole skin.  This aspect of his future he considered as the train rolled into the Southland.  He was twenty-eight years old, and he had never been in love, although, since his twenty-first birthday, his father and Don Juan Sepulvida, of the Rancho Carpajo, had planned a merger of their involved estates through the simple medium of a merger of their families.  Anita Sepulvida was a beauty that any man might be proud of; her blood was of the purest and best, but, with a certain curious hard-headedness (the faint strain of Scotch in him, in all likelihood), Don Mike had declined to please the oldsters by paying court to her.

“There’s sufficient of the manana spirit in our tribe now, even with the Celtic admixture,” he had declared forcibly.  “I believe that like begets like in the human family as well as in the animal kingdom, and we know from experience that it never fails there.  An infusion of pep is what our family needs, and I’ll be hanged if I relish the job of rehabilitating two decayed estates for a posterity that I know could no more compete with the Anglo-Saxon race than did their ancestors.”

Whereat, old Don Miguel, who possessed a large measure of the Celtic instinct for domination, had informed Don Mike that the latter was too infernally particular.  By the blood of the devil, his son’s statement indicated a certain priggishness, which he, Don Miguel, could not deplore too greatly.

“You taught me pride of race,” his son reminded him.  “I merely desire to improve our race by judicious selection when I mate.  And, of course, I’ll have to love the woman I marry.  And I do not love Anita Sepulvida.”

“She loves you,” the old don had declared bluntly.

“Then she’s playing in hard luck.  Believe me, father, I’m no prig, but I do realize the necessity for grafting a little gringo hustle to our family tree.  Consider the supergrandson you will have if you leave me to follow my own desires in this matter.  In him will be blended the courtliness and chivalry of Spain, the imagery and romance and belligerency of the Irish, the thrift and caution of the Scotch, and the go-get-him-boy, knock-down-and-drag-out spirit of our own Uncle Sam.  Why, that’s a combination you cannot improve upon!”